Sunday, July 9, 2017

Judge My Playlist Volume 12: Punk from Yout'

What good guitar sounds like to me....

If you asked me what
music I liked from high school and my mid-20s, I would have said “punk.” (This
came after, and somewhat overlapped a deep “classic rock” infatuation for most
of high school; I don’t cover the past.) There was more than a little
pretension in that, but, meh. I liked some other music (see?), but what I
thought of as punk sat at the center of it, the same way a leashed dog can only
wander so far from the stake in the ground in the back yard. (Also, take your
dogs for a damn walk, take them into your home, or don’t get one.)

“Punk” might have been my
jam, but I missed a lot and dismissed some of the stuff that came to me for
failing to fit a personal, tightly pinched definition of punk – i.e., it could
only be alienated, angry and fast. Punk can be only those things, but, as I’ve
heard more and different people lay claim to marching under a “punk” banner, it
makes more and more sense to expand punk, musically, as an approach to music,
something tied more to mind-set than raging vocals, loud ragged guitar, and a
drummer wailing away as if he’s forever trying to keep up.

First and foremost,
punk seems like it’s about expression, the urgency of getting it out into the
world. Sometimes that’s secondary to learning how how to play your instruments,
too. If you pick up and read Please Kill Me, you’ll see that…every band stands as
an example. (Will loan out that book, btw.)

At any rate, no small number of the songs below came from this collection, so find that if this interests. Some stuff I knew before (X, The Buzzcocks, Stiff...look, see below). I added a
couple songs with an eye to undermining the theme – e.g., those songs ain’t
from my “yout’” - but because I just liked them and they sounded like generic
“punk” genre evolved and maybe a little cleaned up (Blink-182 is plenty fun,
but…y’know?). “Surrender” might also feel like a clunker, but I’d argue it fits
just fine under the spirit/mind-set argument. Oh, and also, almost all of these
songs come from my linear youth, as opposed to my actual youth (as in, I heard
10 of these songs after age 30). And…yep, that’s everything. Enjoy!